


Ancient Magus

by HaephestusCrex



Series: Beloved Beyond Time [1]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! - Pyramid of Light, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga), Yu-Gi-Oh! R (Manga)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Magic, F/M, Female reader insert, Gives me an excuse to research ancient egypt, Idk I just found Thief King Bakura very tragic and I want a glimmer of happiness for him, Kinda, Multi, Orichalcos, Other, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Reader-Insert, Reader-Interactive, Seal of Orichalcos, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, This is gonna be a series, but not obnoxiously like i try to make it fit the tone of ancient times, dreadfully AU, every trigger, im not a good writer though so just be kind, like AHS Coven or Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, no betas we die like men, non-canon magical elements because I liked the lore of the DOMA arc but it was written so bad, seriously the magic in this be wildin, sexy sex eventually, some things ripped from magic shows galore, very grimdark christopher nolan reboot type shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:47:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22814872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaephestusCrex/pseuds/HaephestusCrex
Summary: The Pharaoh's Court is made aware of a slumbering power that has risen on the edge of Waset and made itself known to the Sennen Items. Mahaad senses a power that matches his own and the King of Thieves realises there might be something just as strong in you that can aid him on the path of revenge. In an ancient romantic tug of war between revenge and romance, can you pull towards the light?Or are you fixed to a terrible fate?[First Instalment of a multiple fanfic series]
Relationships: Bakura Ryou/Reader, Reader/Dark Magician, Reader/Mahaad, Reader/Mahad, Thief King Bakura/Reader, Yami Bakura/Reader
Series: Beloved Beyond Time [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1641253
Comments: 11
Kudos: 29





	1. The Terrible Cost

**{The Terrible Cost}**

_Chapter One_

It’s astounding how much people are willing to forgive when it comes to getting what they want. They are able to overlook so much if it’s a means to an ends. It’s not inherently bad people or those with a weak moral fibre that do this exclusively, either. Sometimes, in fact, many times, it is simply the desperate. Not everyone can afford the cost of a healer, who is both a sorceress and an emissary of the Gods by their very nature. In times of great need, the lower classes of ancient Egypt could not often afford such things, and would turn to one another. If someone had studied or assisted a priest in their time, or remembered their own treatments, they would pass them between each other in these poorer social classes, but felt that they did not have the right, or the knowledge, to initiate an invocation to the Gods to expedite their healing. However, for the city of Waset, this was beginning to change - because when the price becomes “anything you can spare” - suddenly, the grace of the Gods feels far more accessible.

“No more of that,” your tone is gentle as it admonishes the shivering young man, who stands in your small home. It is largely mud brick, like so many of the poorer folk that lived on the very edges of Waset. This man is young, in his early teens, and stands gaunt, fingers trembling around a necklace of sea-shells. His name is Bai, and he’s an apprentice to a tradesman, but much like the village area around the outskirts of Waset, he is poor and without means. 

“It still gives me great shame,” he says hoarsely “-that I can spare so little, when you have been so good to us,” he looks down in embarrassment. He flinches only when he feels your warm, soft hands around his battered coarse ones. It makes Bai conscious of how dirty he is, and the grime that sits under his fingernails. You curl your fingers around the necklace and handle it with a reverence that surprises even he. Bai had heard of the kindness of the wise woman at the edge of the city, but to see it himself was something else.

“I ask only for what people can give, your family has already paid a terrible price. These plagues are not kind, but we can be,” your voice is soft, and Bai finds his shoulders untensing with each word spoken. His eyes go impossibly wide when you lift the necklace over your head and wear it around your neck. He had hunted those shells himself, and sewn the thread through them all, it was enough to make him blush. He knew women always aspired to better things, nicer jewellery of gold or even wood. He was embarrassed by how humble it looked beside the wooden beads that adorned your neck. He knew the story of your once-noble family, and you deserved far more than you had been given.

“I’m floored that you would do things like this, I knew you tended the poor - but the plague ridden? If we were of higher standing, I would not be so surprised. But that you attend the poor at all is shocking enough on it’s own, it will delight my mother to know that the stories of your kindness were not exaggerated,” Bai reluctantly looks up at you, but and would feel disrespectful if it wasn’t for the bold finger you had placed under his chin to tilt his head up.

“Come back in two moons with whomever you would like to be present, and we will lay your brother to rest,” you said definitively after mulling over how long preparation would take and what tools you had left at your disposal.

His brother’s body had been reverently washed almost daily. Whilst you had not the resources of official temples, you had accumulated enough from your enterprising nature to do more than the bare minimum, and give the poor a much better send off to the Gods than they could have on their own.

Bai doesn’t know how else to express his gratitude, who he crumbles to his knees and offers himself to your disposal, body and soul. He’s just a child really, even if the men would think he’s on his way to being a man grown. He barely has stubble on his chin and whilst he is all limbs, knobbly knees and lanky joints, you were far too old for how he looked at you.

Still, it was pretty harmless, and despite a long day of learning skilled labour under his master, Bai shows his earnestness to serve. He carried fresh pots of water from the river at your command, and would stoop to his knees despite your protests and wash your feet in a sign of ultimate gratitude and subservience. If anything, it is a testament to how much he loved his older brother, because he did this all in aid of sending his soul to the Gods with honour and love. Even if so much of it was beyond his means, it certainly did not stop him from trying. The villagers back home made their jokes at his expense, of course. He’s a boy coming of age and spending his free time around the wise woman, who is single and unattached. It would come with the territory, but it never stopped you doing your work.

It certainly makes him the envy of many who live nearby. Awkwardly enough, he has been present for you turning away men from your doorway who sought your heart. Bai was always dutiful and polite when this happened, though. He wouldn’t embarrass you, and would quietly dig the cess pits, or do work around your home with his newly acquired skills. He found that he kept learning things even if he just simply kept quiet and observed you, because spending time with you had already forced him to set aside any notions he had of your properness. One of the first things that had been asked, was how appropriate it was for you to tend a male body alone, and have such an ambitious solo practice.

“There is no danger of debauchery to the beautifully deceased, as is so prevalent with these male embalmers that force mothers to let their children rot in the sun before sending them to the Gods. I may be an unattached woman, but such a notion disgusts me, and women’s sexual appetites are not quite so feral,” your lip had curled in disgust. It was then that Bai could see that every person that came knocking at your door looking for help, you treated as a son or daughter of your own, alive or dead. It is what first humbled you to him.

Perhaps that is why Bai would keep coming back.

That, and there was something curious to the wise woman that lived on the edge of Waset, something that made your tiny home swarm with an air of mystery that Bai cannot place. He has so many questions for you, about the rumours, but he respectfully never asks. He thinks you deserve better than that.

You deserve better than what the better off peoples of Waset have to say. He hears the rumours in the markets sometimes when people know where he’s walked from. His Master, Chafkem, told him in great detail of your family’s fall from noble graces with a borderline glee but Bai could only ever defend you. He never knew your mother or father and so could not comment on them, but he’d sooner suffer public scorn than let anyone say a poor word of you.

“It didn’t work you know,” Bai says to you, two moons later, when it comes time to bury his older brother Kashem. He watched the way you pried his lips open and pressed a stone adze - a ceremonial blade, to his various limbs, now stiff with rigor mortis. His body is lain on the only stone furnishing in the peasant home, a long table passed to you as a gift from a stonemason you had treated for severe wounds and took no payment for.

You let out a hum of acknowledgement, and Bai marvels at how your fingers fearlessly brush the visibly plague stricken parts of his body.

“I take It that is why your mother isn’t with us?” his family is being struck by misfortune after misfortune. Bai nods. His mother should be here for the ceremonial burial of her son but her body is currently racked with the agony that comes with a miscarried attempt at another child. She was not fit for such horse travel or a long journey from the village on foot. You could hold off for another day but without all of the tools and oils of an embalmer, Kashem would continue to decompose and natural mummification from a burial in the sands under the elements would be of poorer quality and reflect badly on the soul.

“I told her to come to you, for your fertility spell,” Bai says, but you hold up a hand a shush him. The opening of the mouth was just one rite of many, and you needed to finish this first. Bai is captive by curiosity as the adze is pressed to every limb and a soft incantation to release all of his body for use in the afterlife is murmured by you before you quiet the inquisitive boy.

“Hush my boy. There’s some more incantations to go to guide the wayward spirit, we can’t all be buried like kings but if we do this right, we may at least open a path to judgement for Kashem’s soul,” at this, Bai turns quiet. He has only ever heard of how these ceremonies go, he never thought he would ever have the social standing to personally bare witness. He watches as you reach for a battered drum kept at the base of the table and blinks owlishly when it is handed to him.

You reach into your muddied, coarse sack-cloth dress and withdraw a menit, a beaded heavy necklace reserved for nobility. It has a weight at the back to keep it from sliding off of your neck, it’s a percussive instrument that is one of the few notable evidences of your noble lineage, having passed down from your mother to you.

“Just do what feels natural, and repeat my words where you feel confident,” you instruct the boy, who feels awkward, but follows suit. His hands beat against the drum inelegantly at first, until you open your mouth and begin to sing.

It is unlike anything he’s ever heard, he heard musicians at festivals, in perfect chorus down the street, and not so long ago as the new Pharaoh had been crowned. It still paled in comparison to this. He falls into a rhythm without realising, and his eyes don’t blink or leave your body as you move with an enviable grace around the stone table.

He swears for a moment that he can feel the whispers of all his ancestors, throatily beckoning his brother on the winds of the swinging menit. It’s something he almost misses, because he finds your voice enviously beautiful, and for a moment, he forgets how to inhale.

The hardened floor beneath his feet feels like it’s thrumming with life, like a low vibration he’s suddenly been keyed into.

_‘When she sings. The Gods listen.’_

The rites and incantations to pass on have never sounded so passionate, and though Bai has never bore witness to how the nobility are buried beyond the parades in the street, he wonders if they’re a fraction as soulful as this.

When it is finally over and your throat is hoarse, and all the rituals are done, as is his last bodily wash, the pair of you wrap Kashem in linens that he once owned as clothes, now torn into blankets and also freshly washed, packing him tightly and fetally. It’s the kind of burial nobody in his family could have ever dreamed of. Affording all of the rites of passage is not something commonly given to the lower classes.

The pair of you carry his body into a pre-dug hole under the blanket of the stars. Any doubt that Bai had of the legitimacy of your status as a wise woman with knowledge of the mystic arts is dashed. You have the voice of a spellcaster, and the ear of Gods, because when you sang, they listened.

_'To the shadows with everyone who spoke so ill of you. They did not know power when it was right in front of them. Rich fools,'_ Bai thought scornfully.

During the new moon, Bai’s mother would be with child at your hands.

* * *

Your small mud home is more maintained with each passing month, as more curious and desperate people began seeking you out at the edge of Waset. Where other physicians and magicians failed, it was quickly travelling through the common folk that you commanded a certain power. Suspicion was plentiful, due to your family history and presence in the city outskirts without a husband, but nobody could deny your kindness if they had bothered to meet you.

Bai’s mother was a plump-faced woman with short hair and dark eyes, modest hips and a dim air about her. You travelled out of Waset to see her in light of her recent agonies and pains and were unsurprised to hear that she spends every spare moment she had around the temples of Meskhenet. She had refused Bai entry into the room that had been changed for a birth with makeshift birthing bricks that were strewn in blood. You were the first she’d let see it, and instead of pull a face of disgust, you simply looked at the remains with muted sadness.

“My son Bai will have told you I suspect. My prayers have been going unanswered for some time, and the Gods saw fit to take both my sons,” her voice is hoarse from lack of speaking. “He tells me you can help - that the magic of the wise woman of Waset was something…tangible,”.

You flushed a little bit but nodded, magic is weaved into every aspect of Egyptian life and culture, conveyed in rites, rituals, dances and ceremony, but even so, Bai had never felt it so tangibly in his young life.

“My mother was a songstress for the temples in inner Waset, my father was a scribe who dictated works for physicians, I learned many incantations and invocations before their passing. It is why I see people in my home for all manner of things. When your son told me of your ills, after we laid your beautiful boy to rest, it gave me such pain in my heart,” you said softly, an earnest hand placed on your chest over the shell necklace. “Much as it may give us joy to release our loved ones to the heavens, time with them first is precious and sacred, especially to a mother,” - and you said it with such a sense of understanding, that Bai’s mother - Fironet, had to remind herself that you had no children yourself. “You deserved longer, and I’m sorry that you were not afforded that,”.

“I see now why Bai is so enchanted with you,” Fironet chuckles without humour, she is far too sad to sound earnestly happy. “I can see why he’s so convinced of your fertility spell. I can’t pay much, though. Not yet. But soon,” she adds quickly.

“It isn’t so much just the payment for services rendered, it is more a payment for what we will need,” you say uncomfortably. Payment for people’s suffering felt wrong to you on an intrinsic level, so you only took what people could afford to comfortably give so that you could pay your taxation to the Pharaoh and keep food in your belly. You could charge more, and by rights you should, but you do not. You don’t treat people better or worse based on their payment either - your standards and level of service were unheard of. It is no wonder you are a subject of rumour and mystery.

“I will need yourself, your son, a donation from the father, and a goat - a healthy one. Younger is better,” you specify. Goats were costly, and young fresh ones would be hard come by. The fertility spell you offer is something nobility more often afford and it isn’t you purposefully trying to deny it, but you need the raw materials.

Fironet did a long, audible inhale, looking up at you with bloodshot, swollen eyes, her face stained with tears, and gave an answer that surprised you.

“One more night, and I can get you one - what do you need from Bai’s father?” she queried.

You withdraw a small clay pot from a sack cloth you kept at your side that had a small lid and was no bigger than your palm.

“Fluid of the father, a half jar of semen produced on the night of the new moon,” you specified, ignoring Fironet’s awkward airs. It isn’t something especially prudish, it’s just a rather personal request from a stranger. Such tales are even acknowledged amongst the Gods, who were earthy enough to fornicate with the Nile itself and birth life, it doesn’t surprise Fironet at all that semen is required, but this is going to be an odd conversation to have with the boy’s father - of whom she is hardly personal with. They could even be considered divorced.

You had naturally assumed Bai’s father to be the stonemason master he was learning from, as many boys especially in poorer villages tended to learn from their fathers. It shouldn’t be too hard, you think.

You thought wrong.

Taking a glancing looks at the remains in the birthing bricks, you give the woman an apologetic look.

“I would put your other son to rest, if you so desired, but he is required also. I would ask that you leave the room while I tend to your birthing bricks. If you wish to have a few more moments alone with him, I can do that,”.

Fironet swallows thickly and looks away from you.

“Just do what needs to be done, Magus, but I beg you - be quick,” she leaves as though there’s flames at her heels, and doesn’t look back once you stoop down to your knees at the birthing site.

Some things should just not be bore witness to.

* * *

_{ Night of the New Moon, Outer Desert of Waset }_

The night is dark, the air is clear, and the moon is full, like a bright silver beacon in the sky amongst a gorgeous smattering of stars that watched the sands below. Stones and sticks have been gathered to make an open fireplace nearby, with extremely used wooden drums nearby and two tents made from leftover linens setup nearby.

You had fully expected to meet the stonemason master when the horses rode in carrying Fironet’s father. He’s a burly figure swathed head to toe in black to keep warm during Egypt’s surprisingly frigid nights. It’s as cold as it is blistering hot once the sun goes down. He rides in with another figure, who is equally cloaked. Both dismount, and Fironet just gestures to a tent for her husband. You stand by the fire, stoking it while the other male figure dismounts. It is now that you see he has the goat whose muted bleats are kept quiet by a tight rope around its face. The poor thing had been bound to the horse, and struggled to keep up the pace riding there. The second man now binds the goat by its feet so it can’t run and tips it on its side cruelly so he can free his horse.

Bai is present, and shifting from foot to foot nervously. He carried large buckets of water and looked up at the sky, then at the shadowy figure curiously, before glancing at the tent his mother and father had gone into.

“Thank you for doing this,” said Bai quietly, he knows fertility rituals are costly. You nod once, and see Bai’s father leave the tent, bereft of his cloak and scarf. He has Bai’s eyes, but he definitely isn’t the stonemason. His complexion is a shade lighter, and he has the same warm pools of honey-brown eyes as his son, but they are bereft of any warmth. His hair is a ferocious mess of black curls, and he has some muscle definition. It is easy to see the family resemblance to Bai and his deceased Kashem.

Part of you has to wonder what Fironet said to get the man here, he did not even attend Kashem’s burial, but you hold your tongue. There is probably a reason that Bai lets most people assume his Master is his father and not this man.

“You’re in luck,” the man says callously “-we were riding this way when we got your message,” he addresses you and Bai. Bai just shrugs and avoids looking at him much - it is something you make a mental note of. Fironet must really love this man or at least love whatever he imparts to his offspring to want his children when he seems so very careless. His name is Hem-Bai, and he seems to be treating the whole affair like it was just a pit stop in his long week.

You frown at the man, and are unable to keep a kind word on your tongue at his tone and judging from Bai’s body language, and the fact Fironet had not addressed the matter, you air your thoughts. Mostly as his entire demeanour reeked of disrespect so towards the ritual you organised and you were keen to deliver some of that attitude back.

“Your elder son passed of the plague, it’s a shame you couldn’t have passed through earlier,” you bite out.

It’s the response that makes Bai tense and you clench your jaw.

“I suppose it’s good we’re creating another then,” he said callously, making you very thankful Fironet was not currently in earshot. “-Let me get my role in this explained. You need me to go and pleasure myself to the point of nausea and give you the product?” - you almost balked at his rude tone. While not prudish at all, the frankness and lack of reverent regard for the magical aspect of what was happening raised your hackles. This earned a bark-like laugh from the other man.

“Care to assist?” at this, your hand flew up and swatted the man on the cheek so quickly nobody could have caught it if not for the sound it made on impact. Adultery was one of the worst crimes, and to say such a thing when Fironet begged his presence was disgusting. Disrespectful to you too. This made the other man laugh harder and remove his hood, coming up behind Hem-Bai in a jovial manner.

“You cannot be such a bastard and not expect a backhand,” he’s laughing uproariously, and Bai has gone very, very tense next to you and instinctively walks beside you as though protecting you. “Here’s me thinking this backwards spellcaster ritual would be a boring waste of my time, I’m already having fun,”.

“Don’t make this a joke, your family has had to deal with enough pain,” you scold Hem-Bai thoroughly, though he doesn’t seem too bothered. You take stock of the other man, who had been laughing at Hem-Bai’s expense.

He has dirty grey hair which falls in downward facing spikes and frames his face elegantly. His eyes are the kind of darkened grey that veers on muddy blue under different lighting, more so from the open fires, and it highlights a long, jutting scar beneath his left eye to the same level as his lips. The man emanates a roughness, and a darkness, that puts your teeth on edge for reasons you would not be able to articulate aloud if you had to. Bai probably felt it too, maybe. Which is why he stood so close, eyeing him warily.

“And who are you? Family?” you’re short with him, but he waves it off.

“Consider me Hem-Bai’s boss. Don’t worry about it. We got you that goat, didn’t we?” he doesn’t give you a name, you notice, which sets you off a bit, and when he smirks at Bai, Bai cannot look back up at him.

The scarred man mentally notes there are no fertility statues, and that the ritual is under the cover of darkness. He has some familiarity with rituals that need to be done under the cover of night, and it usually meant people were doing something they shouldn’t.

“Right. Thanks, but don’t get in the way, just do what I say, and don’t - don’t lose yourself,” you say after a moment. Your phrasing earns an eyebrow raise, but you ignore him, turning to Bai who opens the tent flap as his mother emerges, wrapped only in a thin linen sheet.

“This is it, we’ll soon have everything once Hem-Bai is finished, I have to stress upon you though, that this spell is no…celebration, not like rites of passing, or birth festivals, or even prayers,” your eyes flick to Fironet, who stands resolute, but visibly nervous and pointedly ignoring the presence of the scarred man.

“This spell is no party for anybody involved,” your voice takes on a tone of grave urgency, and Fironet just nods.

“I realised that when you told me you would not bury my baby,” said Fironet quietly. You gesture to the water bucket that her son had brought as she tied the sheet around herself more firmly.

“Drink half of that and bathe your hands, feet, face and womb with the rest inside the tent,” you instructed. “When the ritual is done, I sleep for four days and four nights, I expect you to tend me, as per our arrangement,” Bai nods, eyes wide.

The scarred man takes a back seat now, instead of making awkward conversation with Bai, he follows your movements. His face is curious when you carry something out of your own tent which is just a pile of bloody clothes.

“You. Move the goat behind the tents. Bai, stay here and stoke the fires and don’t move,” the boy nods in confusion, and the scarred man humours you, using his impressive strength to lift the goat as though it were a sack of potatoes instead of dragging it before gently setting it down behind the tent.

There’s a reason you instruct Bai not to move, and do this behind the tent. Some things shouldn’t be witnessed.

“Turn away, don’t watch,” you instruct the scarred man, but he ignores you as you kneel by the goat and cloak the contents of the bloodied pile with your body but it didn’t take much to guess the contents.

“Is that…?” the man drawls and trails off, you snap at him to hush and just nod once, tersely. In that moment, he knows what is taking place is an affront to the heavens, and why this is taking place under the cover of darkness.

“I told you, this wasn’t a party,” you exhale shakily, swallowing your bile as the goat begins to feed on the fetal remains. He watches as you dip your fingers in the blood and begin to mark the goat’s forehead with your thumb and murmur a slur of incantations under your breaths. There was no way Fironet or Bai should see this, some things shouldn’t be witnessed.

“Is that why we’re doing this at night?” it’s Bai who asks, from the other side of the tents “-because we aren’t supposed to do this spell?” he’s a smart guy, catches on quick.

“We do it at night to hide our sins from the good Gods,”

Everyone is momentarily silent, with only the crackling of the fire to be heard.

* * *

Bai is unbelievably anxious and scared. Not from you, not of the communal sin you were all part of but the man his father had ridden in with. One look on his face told that man that Bai knew who he was, but had elected not to say anything. He’s hoping this will all occur without you ever knowing, but that is wishful thinking.

He’s distracted when you come up from behind the tents and kneel beside the fire, urging him to do the same so you can see the angles of his face more clearly. You had taken a sack with you, and began drawing out small clay pots.

He flinches when he sees you plunge in a withered brush and draw it out, covering it in a dark red substance that has an unmistakably familiar smell of blood, mixed with paint pigment to give it a fiercer shade and consistency.

It’s Kashem’s, because nothing is stronger than familial blood, and Kashem was a perfect marriage of both his mother and father’s physical genetics. It was better than demanding it out of Bai and draining him to a point of weakness.

The scarred man is watching with intrigue, if he realises it’s a mixture of blood, he doesn’t comment. He watches with a muted fascination as you begin smearing Bai’s face, arms and upper torso ritualistically, as though painting a stencil of his bones in a haunting bodily skin-paint.

Bai squirms and flushes darkly in the light of the fires. The scarred man smirks at him, and he looks away. Bai gets the sense his slight crush is obvious, but he cannot seem to reign in his reactions.

“Do I get a paint job?” the scarred man asks wryly. You consider it - he has a kind of crackling aura of power that had made you take pause. It could be useful for the ritual, until he comes closer to you and Bai and you glance at his morphing shadow. It takes the shape of a wide beast with a long, thick, narrow tail that possessed a jutting tongue and the very vision of it - which felt like something only you were seeing, made your blood run cold in your skin for a moment.

“No,” you blurt - this man, whoever he was, shouldn’t have anything to do with this. It could get messy. Whatever that…. cursed shadow of his was, it shouldn’t be near a fertility ritual, even if his power could be of use. “Not like that anyway,” you approach him and he stares down at you. He’s tall, and a bit imposing compared to your petite form, but you tip-toe and put a bloodied finger near his forehead.

“Stand still would you, this is so your Ka doesn’t interfere with what’s happening here,” the scarred man blinks in surprise when you say that. You smear a seal of rejection on his forehead with your forefinger and thumb in a series of straight lines and circles.

“You can carry the goat, you’re strong,” you said simply “-and when I give the signal, you grab its jaw and tilt its head back as far as you possibly can, alright?”.

“I don’t take kindly to orders, woman,” he said, though his tone is absent of malice, he seems a bit amused at being bossed by someone so much shorter than him. He’s agreeable as he can only preen at being called strong, and your admittance to needing that strength, rather than asking Hem-Bai.

“That doesn’t surprise me, somehow, but I got a feeling that leaving someone like you idle is a bad idea,” giving the man something to do seemed prudent, Hem-Bai was lazy enough to stay in his tent after his donation. He doesn’t seem to want to do much beyond the bare minimum, though he does watch, even if he cringes when his son begins to smear the same blood and paint pigment on his skin, copying his markings roughly when he emerges.

“Have a good time?” the scarred man smirks, but Hem-Bai just snorts, putting the small clay pot down he relived himself in close to your feet.

“I feel numb from the waist,” Hem-Bai complained, pouting a bit. “But I suppose the whores will be glad for a break,” he snorts.

“Sit down by your son and just copy what he does,” you said irritably - Hem-Bai’s nature just seemed to rub you entirely the wrong way, more so than the Scarred Man. These men didn’t seem to be taking the ritual seriously at all, so you ignore them and begin chanting.

Bai takes this as a single to begin drumming tunelessly until he finds rhythm with your words, and Hem-Bai rolls his eyes, following suit.

The Scarred Man sits back, frowning in curiosity still. Fironet comes out of the tent, swathed in only the light sheet and you gesture with your hands for her to lay opposite the fire and the men.

Hem-Bai feels ridiculous, until their shadows begin dancing out of sync with the beating of their hands against the worn drums. The Scarred Man notices also, and he licks his lower lips in fascination. Him and his son, for the first time, seem to be in perfect lockstep.

The chanting is the language of the common, at first, anyway.

_O’Meskhenet forgive my transgression,_

_O’Gods of the Dead and the Damned, forgive my transgression,_

_Ahm-shere bari bari ma calto._

_Ahm-shere bari bari ma calto._

He wonders, briefly, if this is tongues you’re speaking in, but it sounds so clearly like a language that the Scarred Man wonders if it’s one of the foreign languages. It has a marvellous and haunting cadence to it.

The men watch you rise and your coarse sack-cloth dress fall to your ankles, exposing your body in all of its unashamed nakedness. There is a certain power to being in the purest form - naked form, the one you were born as. There were temples in the times of previous Kings that had mysterious servants of the Goddess Isis that would walk high-walled temples in ornate wigs, extravagant makeup, red painted lips and tattooed breasts and thighs and only a light decorated loincloth or nothing, and only the King would gaze upon them and worship there.

Of course, those were unsubstantiated rumours, but it is the Scarred Man’s first thought when he drinks in your naked body. The wind picks up and blows the man’s hair a bit, but it feels unnatural, and the horses buckle to the sands suddenly, as if overcome by something.

_Hannun-ma sen bey Orichalco_

_Hannun-ma sen bey Orichalco_

Your lips are painted red, and there are deep, intrinsic patterns of blacks and reds around your thighs and stretch into your inner body, curling around as though to frame your womanhood. His eyes follow the sway of your waist as the drumming becomes louder and more enthusiastic. Out of the corner of his eyes, he can see Hem-Bai and Bai moving with the entire strength of their spines as though they were flailing strings of yarn in the wind. Their bodies would slam forwards with all the strength they could muster into the drums, and then recline backwards as far as they could while sitting down and not falling on their backs, only to do the same thing again and again in perfect synchronism.

_Divinay de Eldritch Terrum, shada bey Orichalco_

_Invocat de Levios Skier helion bey Orichalco_

The Scarred Man glances only for a second, and sees their eyes are completely blank, as though they’d rolled all the way into the back of their skulls, they are pure white. It was as though they were possessed, and not for the first time in his life, he feels like he’s baring witness to something he perhaps shouldn’t have.

Instead, he rakes his eyes back up your body, pulling them away from your thighs and rear to your stomach and then your chest, seeing the same tattooed patterns framing your breasts in a similarly bewitching fashion. Any discomfort, he forcibly squashes down.

You bend down near him, causing him to lick his dry mouth and train his eyes to not look at his henchman - his loyal right hand, Hem-Bai, and his son, as their possessed manner was…disquieting.

Your body sways around the fire and Fironet’s form. You hold a juniper shoot in your hands, the man can recognise it from the sharp nettles it has, even as a shoot, it is sharp looking. There are no berries, and he watches in further fascination as you wave the shoot over the fire place, slowing your chant to a temporary halt as the drumming went faster in the momentary silence.

In your other hand is the pot of male fluids, which you crack at the base of the fire near Fironet’s feet. The shoot catches flame, but you do not panic, your body continues to sway, your legs twisting, dancing and moving to the bleat of the drums as magic swarms the air, the wind carries whispers of hopeful souls and resentful ghosts that are hissing in an indistinguishable string of murmurs.

The Scarred Man can feel his heart pounding as your body continues to the circle the fire, stopping ahead of him and turning to face him fully.

Whatever his expression was, it must have begged some form of explanation as you danced with the rapidly incinerating juniper shoot.

“The Old Gods, they have to see a willingness to sacrifice, to suffer, and then, they pay attention, we _make them!_ ” your voice carried over the camp site in a haunting lilt, though you didn’t sing those words, it raises the hairs on the man’s arms. You throw your head back, exposing your throat utterly in a way that somehow feels more revealing than the entirety of your nakedness. His eyes widen as you swallow the fiery shoot in one long motion, dropping it down your throat without so much of as a flinch of a burn. He even hears - and sees - you swallow, the muscles of your throat flexing as the burning nettles go down.

You resume chanting now, moving more evocatively, and provocatively, arms and all, swaying your hips along with your heaving chest. For a moment, the Scarred Man forgets to exhale, and his eyes are watering from not even blinking. He doesn’t want to miss a minute of this intoxicating, bewitching ceremony, it is unlike anything he’d ever heard of, or ever seen. Despite the dark things in the lead up to this, he still feels a hot, warm sensation boiling in the base of his abdomen the longer he soaked in your bareness. It was like you were a lightning rod for the magic in the atmosphere, and it felt as though he could see it channelling through your blood in every sway, every bounce, every shuddering breathe between each recitation. Perhaps it is the nature of the fertility ritual, but the waves of arousal are stifling, and inappropriate, like flood season for the Nile and yet he is so numbed with awe and wonder that he cannot even think to hide his visible arousal.

He snaps out of his numbness when your fingers beckon him closer with a come-hither gesture, and for a moment his mind is blank. He wonders if he is to join you, and for a hot second, all of him _wants to._ It’s like you’re pulling on every male sense he has, enough that his black outer and red inner cloak collapse in a puddle at his feet.

It only occurs to him now that he doesn’t know how to dance, and you don’t even glance at the copious amounts of gold draped down his heavily muscular torso, it’s as though you are trying to command him with your eyes.

His arms reach out for you, he needs to _touch -_ and move in synchronism. It’s only when his Ka boils inside of him in such a way that he snaps out of his enthralled daze and thinks twice about reaching for the naked flesh of your stomach and sides.

With a flick of your long hair that brushes playfully against his bare chest, he exhales when it feels like he’s gained control of himself. You tilt your head in the direction of the goat as you move, and instinctually he knows. He remembers your instruction. It is time. This must be a sacrifice.

He lifts the goat, which is still bound, and moves closer to you as you move to Fironet, whose staring blank-eyed at the skies. The Scarred Man falters though, as you stop your movements and stoop down over Fironet’s body, knees either side of the linen sheet to straddle her form.

His traitorous mind reminds him that Hem-Bai’s wife is wearing nothing under that linen sheet, and the layers of separation between your naked form and hers are almost non-existent, but just present enough to be so seductive that it should be offensive. He has to bite back the groan in the base of his throat - this image was searing itself into his mind and behind his eyelids, it will be something difficult to forget.

And then, _Gods curse you_ , you begin to move, _again_ in that _perversely haunting_ fashion.

Just as sensually as before, straddling and moving slower, which causes the drums to move slower.

It feels like the chants are about to reach a crescendo, and the whispers on the winds are peaking to a scream almost. On instinct, he gets on one knee to present the goat at your height, the flames that consumed the cracked pot of Hem-Bai’s fluids turned to a sudden searing, blue that rose the heat in the air to the highest point, until it bent and turned his vision wavy when he looked through the smoke at the drumming men briefly.

_'What manner of magicks is this?'_ Is the only thought circling his mind between the fog of arousal and enchanting airs. He tilts the goats head back when you look at him with sightless whited-out eyes matching the Bai family. He didn’t even see you pick up the adze that was beside the empty pot of blood and paint, and in one seamless motion, you run a sharp dagger across the exposed throat of the goat, spraying yourself and the linen covering Fironet, and some of her cheek.

The Scarred Man’s eyes go wide as you rub the blood down the length of your midsection, before reaching for the slit of the jugular and gathering a large pile of fleshy mass and blood, before rolling up the linen on Fironet’s body to expose her womanhood, rubbing it against her stomach and womb. Your body still moved left to right with a haunting sway against her hips in a sensuous grind, your neck following suit but in the opposite direction, like the body of a slithering snake.

It was strangely hypnotising.

_Finit Orichalcos._

And just like that, the roaring blue fire returns to orange, just for a moment, before putting itself out utterly, blanketing the camp in darkness.

The drums stop, the Bai’s are slumped over as though asleep, before letting out confused and tired groans.

The wind doesn’t die down, it just drops to nothing, a cold, frigid air. The only scent is blood and smoke, as ash carries itself to the sands.

Just before the flames go out, the Scarred Man watches as your eyes return from being utterly white, but shut completely, your form slumping over Fironet and collapsing ungracefully to her left, naked and covered in smears of blood.

All of the power that kept a stranglehold of the atmosphere drained in an absolute instant, in all the time it took to blink.

You slept for four days and four nights.

* * *

The Sennen Necklace burned with the force of a sun, enough so that Isis had to pull it from her throat to check for any searing marks. She’s uncomfortable, and covered in sweat from head to toe, trembling on the spot as Mahaad supports her body.

The pair are quiet, very aware that they had witnessed something dark, powerful, and intimately personal.

A great raw magic has awoken, and the King of Thieves has it laying before his feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \--
> 
> The Reader gets a mixed reception, the lower classes think she's quite lovely but there's a black mark over her name when it comes to nobles, just to explain the mixed messages here.
> 
> Trivia time! Waset is what the Egyptians called Thebes.
> 
> Juniper is a popular "spice" of that era.
> 
> The thing about the Priestesses of Isis are true! Anyway, R&R? Justify my research binge with attention pls.


	2. The Dark World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The things you invoke matter, there is power in a name.
> 
> An old friend says hello.
> 
> The Eldritch Terrors are not happy.
> 
> The Jackal is coming.

**{The Dark World}**

_Chapter Two_

For four days and four nights, your dreams are filled with uncertainty, and terror. To fiddle between life and death is to commit a great affront to the divine. Fertility rituals and spells by their nature are meant to be loving, pleading acts of need that rely on the grace of dark Gods. To circumvent the will of good Gods and force fertility, and to behave so wilfully is the greatest folly of man. You had maintained the basic rules, of course, of the universe. Something for something. Fertility spell, or natural conception, the rules are simple. Something doesn’t come from nothing. All energy and being that is created is essentially recycled in some manner. The goat used in the fertility ritual trapped the soul of the recently departed, which it had consumed the remains of. It was to be released and reborn again, through its mother, and through the will of the father, and the Older Gods, and paid for with the death of the livestock.

In the Thief King’s opinion, it had all been rather brutal. He hadn’t understood the necessity of it, but he had a sense of the gravity, if nothing else. Hem-Bai was eager to get moving, because both he and his son had barely remembered any of what they had taken part in, but a sense of unease prevailed over them. The Thief King did of course, insist that nothing was amiss, because he didn’t need insecurity and doubt in his men.

Bai and Fironet had been ready to transport your body back to their village as part of the agreement you had apparently struck. Thief King Bakura, on the other hand, had other ideas.

“You can’t - she didn’t, we didn’t agree to this,” Fironet bristled, she knows who Thief King Bakura is, and common sense should dictate abject fear, but after the loss of both of her sons so closely together, she finds it hard to feel anything really. “She’d never go with either of you, people would know she’s missing, there might not be a bounty but anyone she’s helped might look. Please, just leave her with us,”.

“What’re you scared of, woman?” Thief King Bakura smiles with bared teeth, it is anything but reassuring. Fironet tenses all over, and doesn’t bother looking to Hem-Bai for help, opting to fold her arms over her chest stubbornly instead. “She’ll be fine, your husband’s in one piece isn’t he? Anyway, I’m not asking for permission, I’m telling you, the sorceress is coming with us. I have need of her,”.

Bai rears up at this, he’s visibly angry and it takes all of Fironet not to scream at her son to step away from that man. Even if he partook in the ritual, they were by no means friends, and she knows exactly what kind of a man her husband has aligned himself to.

“Mistress would never help someone like you!” Bai sneers “-she’s a good person,” - at this, Fironet grabs her remaining child back and claps her hand over his mouth.

“Hush boy, he’s killed for less,” Fironet pulls Bai back with a surprising amount of strength and glares at the snickering King of Thieves. “-but I suspect my son is correct. He knows her better than anyone,” at this, she turns sharply to Bai and moves her hand from his mouth.

“Yes well,” Bai is forced to acknowledge, as much as he wants to save you, he lacks power, strength and means, nobody can save anybody from the will of a man such as him. “A smart man wouldn’t try and make her do something she wouldn’t want to do, and when you realise that, bring her back to us so we know she’s alright,”.

Thief King Bakura is surprised at such an easy fight, but the family seem to be communicating something silently, namely that, no matter how kind and sweet you are, your power is tangible - and nothing they could threaten the King of Thieves with would be half as unpleasant as what you could probably do to him if you had to. That, and his power was to be feared, if they got a little bit too smart with him, it wouldn’t bode well for anybody, he has a commanding force that could raze and sack villages, and has left sprays of flames in their wake. They felt a duty to you, as people who had been helped by you, and cared for by you, but their duty ended when it endangered their lives. Fironet has one child left, and hopefully another reborn to come, as much as guilt might eat her, it was as the King of Thieves had said.

He was not asking permission. It was happening.

And so he took you, even despite Bai’s pitiful looks of desperation between him and the man who could barely be called his father.

Poor kid. Even the Thief King thinks Hem-Bai is a bit of a prick, he’d remained silent the entire exchange, and even he’s at a loss as to what his wife even sees in his right-hand man.

“We’ll return,” is all the Thief King says, when it’s apparent Hem-Bai isn’t going to say anything to reassure his own flesh and blood. It isn’t that the King feels any particular kind of way about the situation, but he wants to put a final word in that would end the conversation and expectant glances at his right hand. He felt awkward, for lack of better word.

The tomb robber doesn’t give a date or even a rough time for their return because in truth he doesn’t know. Once Fironet clothed your prone form, the Thief King carries you himself, slinging you over his shoulder from the front when he mounts his horse, positioning your legs and arms as practically as he could. He secures you in front of him, your chin and face draped over his left shoulder as Hem-Bai ties a rope to keep you from falling off.

It wasn’t that the Thief King didn’t trust Hem-Bai, it was rather - well, actually yes. He remembers the disrespectful flirting and amusing as it had been at the time, the last thing they need is for you to start a fight on horseback when you come to. He isn’t sure he entirely brought that you’d be asleep for four days and four nights, at least, he was sure you would be able to be woken, and if that was the case, Hem-Bai wasn’t nearly as physically strong as himself. Subduing you would be much easier for himself, by comparison.

When the village is just a spec in the distance, Hem-Bai speaks.

“She’s out cold, isn’t she?” he asks, a little stunned. At this point, it has been hours, and all Thief King Bakura could hear was the steady sound of your sleepy breathing.

“Dead to the world,” the Thief King says, he has since also gotten used to the clammy warmth of your body against his, riding under the now heavy sun. Little more is said until they get to their base of operations, a small distance from the ruins of Kul Elna, is a cave system that has been steadily dug out to go beneath the sands away from the searing heat of the desert.

Hem-Bai doesn’t say anything for a long moment, before making a casual remark that makes the King of Thieves stiffen slightly. As uncomfortable as riding double is, especially like this, he knows he’s made a sensible judgement call.

“She’s pretty,” it’s harmless enough but once dismounting and lugging your still body over his body still, he gives Hem-Bai a sharp look.

“She’s a practitioner of blood sacrifice,” Bakura replied, with a warning edge to his tone. He wished for a moment that Hem-Bai hadn’t fallen into that strange, possessed trance during the fertility ritual. He wished it so that he would have the good sense to be wary and keep his tongue in his head when it came to you because then he would understand the sort of command you had over the magical forces of this world. He would perhaps be less lecherous if this was the case, and spare him having to be concerned over whether or not he’d debauch you in your unconscious state.

Criminals made for troublesome bedfellows at times and whilst the King of Thieves was very glad for how unscrupulous many of his connections were, they very often lacked finesse, and their debatable moral fibre usually didn’t bother him, but he never had to worry about a debauched hostage.

To be honest, he didn’t even want to think about it like that, ideally, you wouldn’t have to be a hostage, but he can’t really negotiate terms while you’re unconscious. You definitely wouldn’t be a willing participant in his various plans if any of his men lay a finger on you.

“You really don’t remember much of the ritual, do you?” his tone is testy, and Hem-Bai just shrugs in response.

“I know my spine aches a bit, but I don’t remember much. I remember drumming, and then - nothing, really. Some things, but I can’t really piece it together, like something of a dream,” Hem-Bai rubbed the back of his neck “-it was strange, not feeling the time pass,”.

The other part of the bandit lord is pleased that he had not succumbed so utterly to the spell that he had been largely conscious for. It felt like a closed moment between himself and the sorceress, something that was just for him to bare full witness to. He remembered when you warned him too - not to lose himself in the ritual, and he hadn’t known what you meant, until it was happening.

Your fingers had beckoned him closer with a come-hither gesture, finger curling towards yourself, and for a moment his mind had gone utterly blank. He wondered if he was to join you, and for a hot second, all of him had wanted to more than he’d ever wanted to do anything in his life. It’s like you were pulling on every male sense he had, enough that his black outer and red inner cloak had collapsed in a puddle at his feet.

It had only occurred to him in the moment of that ritual that he did not know how to dance, and you hadn’t even glanced at the copious amounts of gold draped down his front, it’s as though you were trying to command him with your eyes - he remembered that. His arms reached out for you, he needed to touch - and move in sync. He remembers the desperation he had felt to do so, and wondered if that was what you had meant when you had warned him about losing himself in the ritual. It was only the strength of his Ka that had stopped him. How much more lecherous would Hem-Bai had been if he had been lucid for this? He’s rather glad he wasn’t.

“Then you don’t know what she’s capable of. Sacrificial magic is nothing to mess with, it’s what made the Sennen items, you fool, and yet you’re standing there wishfully wanting to debauch her,” he scorned Hem-Bai under the pretense of it being sheer idiocy rather than a moral failing, because he knows exactly how to get through to his men. “You didn’t see what I saw,” he added “-it was unadulterated power,” he hissed.

Hem-Bai looks uncomfortable at this, because the King of Thieves isn’t in the business of false compliments or lauding the power of others unless it was justified. He glances between the unconscious body and Bakura a few times, as though trying to picture that much power packed into such a petite little form.

“More to the point, I need her to work with us willingly, I doubt she will be as keen if you’re putting your greasy paws all over her, she’s already slapped you once just for asking,” he smirked at this, and Hem-Bai had enough grace to look a little embarrassed this time around. “It’s going to be hard enough when she comes to and realises she’s not with your wife and son. Hands to yourself and keep a civil tongue in your head, understood?” and just for good measure, he looks down at the man with some measure of seriousness “-Or I will cut it out,”.

“Yes - uh, of course, that makes sense,” Hem-Bai replied, trying to sound casual but feeling a lot like he’d walked into a crocodile’s mouth with the way Bakura was baring down on him.

“You would do well to tell the others that too, the woman stays with me,” - at this, Hem-Bai just nods and scampers off, eager to be dismissed after the casual threat to his bodily integrity. The bandit lord then moves through the system of caves until he reaches a door which is made up of hanging linen and affords him privacy. Entering it, the room is strewn with plundered goods and a large hammock affixed to the walls to wooden pikes that had been hammered into the tightest cracks of the cavern and proved strong enough to support great weight. On the ground was a large, solid wooden bed frame with a tall and ornate headboard. It was the kind of bed the poor dreamed of, and one of his most enriching thefts in terms of improving his quality of life. The mattress was stuffed with reeds and straw, and similar cushioning around the headrest, surrounded by piles of gold, copper and silver deben currency. Without a second thought, he sets your body down on the bed frame and pulls up soft linen sheets.

You hadn’t stirred _once._ Not the entire uncomfortable double ride there, nor during his heated exchange with Hem-Bai, or being moved to a bed. Your breathing remained calm, and rhythmic, for most the part.

He takes a knee and tries to wake you out of curiosity, it had been hours at this point, after all. But you don’t even respond to his movements.

“Four days and four nights, hm?” he murmurs, brow drawn in thought. He wondered how you could cope, not eating or caring for yourself that long. He had to keep you safe for four days and four nights, he thinks he can manage that.

But he cannot protect you in your dreams.

* * *

_“Theri khala cyclana invocat, Levios Skier sihki,” a man stands before you, he has beautifully long hair, and is familiar to you. He speaks a coarse language that is steeped in metaphor at times, but is audibly pleasing in a way that only those who heard it themselves could understand. It had been so long since it had been spoken to you as a form of speech._

_You owe so much to this man, whom you had learned so much from, and he speaks in the same deceptively gentle tone you had always known. He hadn’t aged a day, either. He’s as timeless as he’d been in his youth, and oozes an ethereal blue light whenever he presents himself to you._

_You’re both in a black forest, trees blocking out any form of light, though you aren’t sure if there was ever a sun in this place. This man is the closest thing to a sun, and your soul is in a terrifying, dark land._

_You quickly get to your feet and look at him, feeling your language skills are rusty after not having it spoken to you for so long, you respond back in the language of the common, and it earns you a sneer from the man you had only ever called Lord Magister, in reverence of his seemingly boundless knowledge._

_“You respond to me in the language of slaves? I thought I taught you better,” he responds in kind, for your sake, and his tone sounds vaguely impatient. His accent has a strange corrupted lilt to it as he speaks in Egyptian, it just feels wrong._

_“I’m sorry,” you said softly, meaning it. “It’s been a long time since you have come to me, why now?”_

_The man raised a brow, his long mass of hair moving like a beautiful cape, as the light around him dims, he becomes clearer in your vision. He wears strange white and blue robes that framed his body in a powerful way. It’s now that you realise you’re naked in this place, and look down at yourself feeling a vague sense of embarrassment you had never felt for your purest form before._

_“You called me here,” he says, unphased by your state of dress, or lack thereof. “-and I was curious. In all the years since we’ve spoken, and I sensed the power of your soul, despite all that I taught you, and all the power I shown you. Was willing to bestow upon you. It’s now that you choose to invoke the Orichalcos, and for nothing particularly grandiose,” he mused. “I thought you might be reconsidering my offer,”._

_“I didn’t realise - it would summon you, I shouldn’t be surprised,” you laugh out uncomfortably, looking around the forest and feeling a creeping sensation on the back of your neck. You owe the Lord Magister so much, but as you had gotten older, his motives always seemed less clear, and it was what discouraged invoking the power he held. “I wanted to help someone, more than I have ever wanted to help someone. I needed to circumvent death,”._

_“You’ve done that before,” the Lord Magister said “-with your Eldritch Terrors,” him just mentioning them in this place made your hackles raise, and you look around urgently._

_He hadn’t uttered the Ren - the True Names of those things, but attention to them in this place felt dangerous, sacrificial magic that would bring you here always carried a feeling that you should be hiding until you find the exit pathway._

_“Please!” you hiss out urgently “-don’t mention them here. It’s dangerous,”._

_At this, the Lord Magister scoffs, rolling his eyes at you._

_“It could be much worse, I assure you, little magician,” he said calmly “-your invocation of the Orichalcos would have taken you to a far more frightening place. I made sure you got here, to this Dark World you are so familiar with, they won’t sense a thing as long as I’m here,” he says with a small stretch, beckoning you to walk through the forest with him._

_You look at him uncertainly, not sure if you should thank him._

_“I invoked the Orichalcos because someone was at the ritual who shouldn’t have been. Just his presence bleached the land in death, I was worried the… Dark Lords could not contain it, or would be tempted by its power to corrupt the rebirth ritual. So often, vengeful spirits want to walk the world again, even if attached to someone’s Ka, would sooner detach from it if given a body without a consciousness formed and a magical pathway with which to enter. And where the Orichalcos tempts out the darkness of man, it in turn cannot be tempted itself, you taught me this. I used the Seal to temporarily bind his Ka and hide its energies deep within his body away from the Wicked Ones, it was the only seal I could think of that was strong enough,” you said carefully. The possibility of the Scarred Man’s cursed shadow tearing itself apart was a very real risk._

_“But these….Dark Gods of yours that inhabit this plane, they can be tempted by the dark souls of men? To corrupt a ritual they’ve been invoked in?” he said - genuinely curious. He had a great knowledge of many things, but he learns as societies learn around him, and so much is hidden about the Terrors, or Wicked Ones, as he has heard them be called, that you could be considered the authority on them._

_“I must admit, I am curious, in all the years we’ve known of them and heard whispers of their dark God spirits, even at their most corrupt, my people even doubted their existence and did not dare invoke them. No Shadow Spirit has even dared utter their name, they only make vague mention of them in our scrolls and books,” he says, he guides you through a path and to a stone building with a curious architecture that feels as though it does not match the rest of the Dark World. He guides you inside, and it is bathed in a quiet, warm candlelight that only flickers to life when you both enter._

_It’s here you feel most self-conscious of your nakedness, you always appeared at your most vulnerable in the Dark World. It makes a parody of the powerfulness and confidence that surges through your purest form when doing a ritual. It’s like it punishes you for the feeling and under the light of the candle, all you can do is try to mask the bareness of your soul with your arms._

_“Never be ashamed to bare your soul to me, I’ve known you since you were a child,” his voice is deceptively soft, and gentle, and it’s times like this you feel bad for your doubts or questioning of the Lord Magister and his motives._

_“It’s because of that, that I lent you the power of the Orichalcos when you invoked it, I thought you might have reconsidered my offer,” he opens his palm, and reveals a beautiful, jagged blue crystal stone. Even without touching it, you can feel it pulsing like a tiny heartbeat. “I truly believe that you can be an instrument of the new world,” he’s almost crooning now, reminiscent of how soft he used to be when he appeared to you in your youth. He pressed it against your hand, and you feel a warmth all over your skin that was almost comforting, but it felt as though it was looking for something, deep, deep inside of you._

_Like it was peeling your skin, strip by strip until it got to the centre._

_“The world without darkness, without a need for invoking the Terrors, or begging your so-called good Gods and traversing the Dark World when you need to circumvent them. The one you always deserved, where you would still have your mother and father,” he said._

_He pulls the stone back suddenly though, and observes a crack forming in it, and frowns in pure befuddlement, an expression you had never seen upon his face before, because he was almost certain it would have shattered if he had passed it to you in full._

_“But it appears the Orichalcos doesn’t want you, how strange. I sensed your soul the moment you were born, you know. I knew that you had the potential to be great,” he says, “It is why I taught you so much. I thought there would come a time, in your adulthood, where the Orichalcos would no longer reject you. I thought you were rejected because you were an innocent child without the darkness of Man and yet…” he trails off. “-After what happened to your parents, there is still no darkness, no power to be drawn upon that it wants. It doesn’t punish you for being unworthy, it simply… refuses you,” he exhaled slowly._

_“So I suppose I cannot accept your offer to be a Knight of the Realm, even if I wanted to,” you said, wryly. “-I feel as though you wasted some years on me, Lord Magister,”._

_“No,” he said firmly “-not a waste. I found in you somebody worthy of passing on the legends and teachings of my people. Their sorcery and knowledge would be lost to time if not for us, and I will need someone in the new world I desire to help teach it. You were not a waste of time,” his words made a strange sensation in you rise, a mixture of pride, embarrassment and wonder. Even your parents hadn’t envisioned such grand things for you when they had been alive, and they had been wonderful._

_“I - um, thank you, Lord Magister,” you do not speak his true name, because to you, it felt disrespectful after all he had taught you. “-for everything, and lending me your power when I needed it. I do not know if you will be successful in your efforts to make a better world, but I don’t want to see you become lost along the way,”._

_“Lost?” says the Lord Magister, not insulted, but confused._

_“Your soul feels more distant than I remember from my childhood,” you confess “-as you stand before me now, I do not know what your plans are to create this world you so desire, but I know they’re taking you further from humanity. Your Ka was like a whirling sandstorm, and now, it feels like a mewling kitten, though your Ba energy is limitless, I do not know how else to put it, but I cannot see your immense power behind the Orichalcos anymore - it is hidden. Your soul feels like a whisper to me,” you reach for his body to prove a point, and though you’re both in this astral sort of place, you used to feel so much more tangible to one another, but your fingers merely slip through him._

_“These are the sacrifices for a better world. Those who are not prepared to give anything, will not change anything,” the Lord Magister said firmly. If he is saddened by this perceived distance, he does not show it._

_“I have had to give more of myself to the Orichalcos than I ever thought possible, but you will understand. Maybe not right now. Perhaps not in tens of years, or however long it may take for the world we deserve, but you’ll see,” he takes pause._

_“It has been a long time little magician, you’ve grown into a fine young woman,” he switches gears for a moment, and from thin air, he produces a pair of ornate chairs so you can sit opposite each other. Notably, he does not conjure you clothes, because he wants you to feel vulnerable, and to bare your soul to him always, if he is to trust a shard of the Old World in the vision of his New one. “Perfect for my goals, and I think I may be close to achieving what we need,” he smiles._

_You feel strange about every single thing he’s said thus far, for a reason you’re struggling to pinpoint. You want to feel warm and fuzzy about the whole thing, you do, but his lack of transparency was more troubling than ever now that you were old enough to understand adults and their emotions better._

_“All I need from you is to not succumb to the shadows, or these Wicked Gods as you call them,” he said “-The Orichalcos has shown me your worthiness, but even so, you’re treading a new path where it will become more important than ever to keep all that makes you good,” he practically purrs this, and you are uncomfortable and confused._

_“I wish you would just tell me what you’re doing, but if it’s something I need the stone’s power to understand, I will never know. You always seemed like you knew more than any one man could ever know, and you’re still like that. Tell me, what new path am I on?” you asked, feeling uncertainty rising up in you._

_“The one that’s useful to me, but puts you in danger. This man you mentioned, present for the fertility spell. He has a darkness that will wish to end the world and the power I need within it to reshape it into a better place. This cannot be, to purge it forever and keep the universe bathed in his darkness will rob it of ever being reborn into something beautiful. In your country, in your home, exists items of great and corrupt power, and the Orichalcos whispers that if they meet with this dark soul, it could be catastrophic, do you understand?” he reaches for you - in a familiar gesture, almost to comfort you as he burdens you with great knowledge, but his hand merely falls through you, and makes you recoil as it does._

_“These items are what broke the Seal of Shadows and brought Shadow Magic to your world. I watched them helplessly as they were created. I believe the full force of dark duel spirits stopped my intervention. It is why the… Ka as you call it, is so powerful and dark within that man. So I charge you with this, to keep him away from the Shadow Items wielded by the Pharaoh and his Court. He has your body right now. That man.”_

_You looked alarmed at this, because you should be with Fironet and Bai, not Hem-Bai and his boss. Especially if said boss truly has such a darkness inside of him!_

_“What?! That’s not right - I shouldn’t - I can’t - no! I shouldn’t be there,” you rushed out. “That wasn’t in the deal.”_

_“Miserable isn’t it? You do an unimaginable kindness at risk to your soul for a mother who loses everything and this is how they repay you,” the Lord Magister sighed. “-but we can turn this into something good. You can keep him from the darkness in the Shadow Items, and I might just stand a chance of doing some good in the world, with your help.”_

_“I still don’t fully understand what you’re doing, you won’t - or can’t - tell me, but I can’t argue with a world-ending darkness, I definitely sensed some powerful, resentful Ka, so I can believe it,” you frowned._

_“You deal with powerful darkness every time you call upon the Wicked and you have been shown to be uncorrupted despite it all. I can trust you with this, little magician,” he said earnestly. “In fact, I wonder why they answer your calls at all. I suppose they sense the sheer potential I did.”_

_“And they have the arrogance to think they can corrupt anything if allowed enough reign. My Ka is a powerful one though, I think. Antithetical to all that they are. They’re drawn in by temptation but blocked at the door. They are vainglorious creatures though, and answer my call nonetheless,” you said quietly “-but this is their domain. This is where I go when I’ve used their powers and they are angry they received little in return. I prefer the lighter magics, but circumventing death is never light.”_

_“Ah. So that is why you fear them so. I thought I was doing you a favour taking you to a world you’d understand, a spirit dimension you’re familiar traversing and leaving once your….Ba as you put it, replenishes. Perhaps I should have taken you somewhere else,” he mused. “-Nonetheless, I do not know how far the Terrors extend in the dimensions of the duel spirits world. Perhaps nowhere is beyond their reach,”._

_“The Dark World is their home though, my survival odds are likely greater in the other dimensions, but yes, I ah, don’t know the way out of them. I never traversed them,” you admit, you’re far more familiar with the hellscape of the Dark World._

_“Well, at any rate, the Orichalcos can mask your presence, though it is by its nature, intrusive, so they may have sensed the forced change I have done to the landscape of their home and know where you are by default. Stay until your Ba replenishes, and then, leave as fast as you can,” he said, sounding honestly concerned for your safety._

_“I will, thank you, Magister - for uh, for everything. For lending your power, I wish you well, and wait for the day you can bare your own soul back to me.”_

_“Me too, little magician, me too.”_

* * *

The Thief King watched as your head tilted from side to side, brow furrowed and a light sheen of sweat on your body.

Four days and four nights had passed, and he had not been able to feed you or do anything to support surviving. So it was very jarring when your eyes wrenched open in one motion and you gasped so loudly he almost fell out of his hammock.

You bolted upright, and your body trembled all over. Your eyes are crazed, dazed and wild, looking urgently around the room but not really seeing. Your hands are clammy and your fingers quiver so hard you cannot even make a fist.

“Sorceress?” the King of Thieves calls to you, rising out of his hammock and walks to your body. Your skin is drained of colour, and you look deeply disturbed. You weren’t surprised to find the Lord Magister had been correct - your body wasn’t where it was supposed to be, mostly, you were incredibly shaken by having to bolt from the Wicked Gods out of the safe haven that had been carefully constructed in the Dark World once you had the strength to return.

Your heart was pounding wildly, and right then, the supposed darkness inside your would-be captor wasn’t immediately a concern that was on your mind.

You left running from the mouth of a large, black jackal whose form was so large it would dwarf the moon itself.

“The place in between,” you gasped, trying to shake yourself into reality. “-the place in between,” you muttered again “-the jackal dog,” you looked around, before it fully registered you had escaped its jowls.

“Did you hit your head?” the Thief King asks bluntly, glancing at the tall headrest, but you seemed too disturbed to even really care you weren’t where you were supposed to be. “You were dreaming,” he adds lamely.

You screw your eyes shut, and pace your breathing out slowly, trying to get your heart rate to a normal speed because it felt like it was going to impale itself on a rib. You felt like you had just physically ran for your damned life.

“Y-yeah,” you cringe when it comes out as a stammer, glancing down, you see and feel your familiar coarse dress all over your body, and it is enough to jar you to the situation. “Yes,” you say, repeating yourself a few times. “Dreaming, I was dreaming. Why am I here?” you muttered, rubbing the back of your head.

Everything feels so fuzzy and overwhelming, especially when you look at the thief.

“Who even are you?” you just sound so tired, helpless and _done with it all,_ despite having four days of rest that it actually surprises the bandit lord so much he doesn’t answer right away. Then it clicks that at no point had he ever introduced himself, and you had woken in a strange place you shouldn’t have been at.

“My sincerest apologies, Sorceress,” a coy little smirk on his face now, he moves with a smug sort of flourish when he bends down, and puts a hand on his chest as though he were joking at your confused expense.

“I’m Bakura - ah yes, that one, King of Thieves, welcome to my…not so humble abode,”

_That_ Bakura.

_The King of the Gods-be-damned Thieves_ Bakura.

World-Ender _Bakura, apparently._

_What in the name of the Wicked Gods…?_

You looked around at the piles of copper, gold, silver, lapis lazuli, rubies, emeralds, necklaces, and all measure of treasure around you and were almost nauseated by all the colour. It was so overwhelming that it was an offence to the senses.

You let out a long, low groan, you were just not in the kind of head space to begin decoding your time in the Dark World, and simultaneously process the new situation.

Just then, your stomach absolutely roared with hunger, and it was so apparent that it sent a cramp through your entire body that made you lurch forward on the bed. It was loud enough that it was very, very audible too.

“You haven’t eaten in four days, lets have a little chat over some food,” he smirked. “Lets see if we can’t reach to some sort of happy place with each other,”.

You didn’t respond, and just recline until the back of your head hits the front of the headrest with a dull thud.

You look so unimaginably exhausted.

“I cannot even begin,” your voice is hoarse, from lack of fluid and not talking for so long “-to talk nice with you right now. Feed me, and let me rest. You haven’t murdered or debauched me in my sleep in the four days you’ve taken me for whatever Gods be damned reason. So you probably wont now.”

World Ender or not, you were just tired. You had too much to think about and your body needed to recover in the physical world as well.

_“You’ve been asleep for four days!”_

“I was everything but asleep,” you closed your eyes. “Power comes at cost. I was suffering, so please, lets just eat.”

“.…you’re a terribly strange little thing. Has anybody ever said that?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> {{ so... the Lord Magister is Dartz, surprise surprise. I'm robbing things from canon and non-canon and making my own and my own weird abomination timeline that may or may not make sense. 
> 
> I loved the lore and elements of the DOMA arc, it was bad, Dartz was written poorly. I've stolen the concept of the Wicked Gods from YuGiOh R! but it isn't canon to this timeline as Pegasus is/will be alive in the future(?) I also made Dartz a better character. I think. I mean this chapter was "holy exposition batman!" but -makes vague hand gestures towards the disastrous DOMA arc- look at what I was given to work with! Bah. Note that at this point in his long life, Dartz isn't as crazy as he is 10,000 years into the future. It was progressive. It took time for him to become the crackpot in the Duel Monsters! anime timeline. But hey, if they were gonna shoe-horn in an even older & ancient power, I was gonna make it important right? I was also gonna make it count.
> 
> Dartz's anime explanation was shit. "hurr some other demon was in the way so i just waited to claim Atem's soul cos reasons." NO! We're fixing that, and he's using Reader to get Bakura out of the way and prevent him from becoming Zorc in the first place, at this point in time, Mahaad still wields the Millennium Ring, no portion of TKB's soul is in it, he is, at this point, a "whole" soul. Also, if Dartz is more humane seeming at this point, it makes him God damned Machiavellian that he can manipulate the Reader into thinking he's a good egg when he's been COLLECTING MFIN SOULS THIS WHOLE ASS TIME
> 
> Thief King Bakura has been forced to examine his morals a little and protect your unconscious body. The slow burn begins :^] rest assured this is a love story transcending over time. Big slow burn. Big sexual tension. Big lewds. Big fucks. Promise.
> 
> I stole the spirit world dimensional lore from GX (thanks for explaining it Yubel!)
> 
> Will take random elements from the manga to flesh out the characters because we learned very little in the show/movies. I reject reality and substitute it with my own! This is a (probably 3-parter) fanfic series set at various stages for a love story that goes across time from past life TKB to current Ryou Bakura. Enjoy it.
> 
> R&R my dudes. Big ups to groovy_ceo for leaving a comment <3 }}


	3. The Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which you fully regain your senses after much needed rest after travailing the Dark World.
> 
> You want answers.

**{The Deal}**

_Chapter Three_

The King of Thieves has never been more glad to be a man of means than he was right then. In truth, while a lot of your hunger can be explained by the four days in astral comatose, it had been a long time since you’d been afforded the luxuries of your youth. Bakura could only watch once he’d finished eating himself, as a steady pile of fruit cores built up on the ground, and you’d managed to get through two pomegranates, an apple, two eggs and were currently chowing down on a large bowl of vegetable broth with bread with no sign of stopping.

It was helping you wake up a little, but you’re still a bit haunched over with tiredness. You hadn’t spoke much, beyond asking for more food. You do not eat in silence, but the airs are awkward.

“Four days and four nights,” he starts with that “-you were out cold, I couldn’t wake you. But I did try, before we left the ritual grounds, and after,” - though he took you anyway, and probably would have regardless. He is trying to approach you on the best terms he can, or at least, appear to.

Dipping your bread into the broth, you give him a brief, considering look. Did he really have so much darkness inside of him that the Lord Magister thought he’d unleash it on the world? Yes, his Ka is entrenched with the stench of death, resentment and power - you had sensed that much on the night of the fertility spell and when you’d seen its shadow, but world-ending? It almost seems a bit exaggerated now that you are no longer in the Dark World. On the surface level, he doesn’t seem quite that terrible. He is, however, the callous entity responsible for sacking a great many of the temples in Waset, even the one your mother had served - but that happened after she was no longer a songstress there at least.

“It might be hard to believe, but I’m not usually in the habit of taking others as live hostages. Their things, yes, but not people. I’m a tomb robber -” he begins, rather frankly. He remembers your demeanour with Hem-Bai and is gambling on the feeling that frank and blunt with you was the best way to get what he wants. Within reason, of course - he remembered what Bai and Fironet had said of your moral fibre, and that might be his toughest challenge yet. However, you win more favour with kindness, than fear, but it isn’t often he needs something from someone else, so he’s a little out of sorts and doing his best to maintain that he isn’t.

“Oh Thief, I _know_ who you are,” you cut him off, and though you aren’t one to respect a grave desecrater, but he had made a name for himself since he was very young. He’s only a few years older than you, but you were raised on his infamy. You looked up at him from the bowl of broth in your hands, through your eyelashes, your voice taking on a quiet, reminiscent drawl. You remember hearing it all through your mother, and just remembering her gave your voice a delicate purr of fondness.

“I’ve heard of you since I was a child,” - he visibly preens at this, not noticing that you pointedly did not call him a King. He observes your guarded and wary expression, it was deserved, and he can only wonder how far his name had travelled in the mouths of fearful Egyptians. Your eyes are distant, for a moment, because you’re remembering your parents. Your mother.

Gods, what would she say if she saw you here, with this man? Breaking bread with him?

“Mm, is that so?” his prideful tone oozes through, and he’s about to question you further, but you carry on unprompted. He needed to know that you did not think highly of the deplorable things he has done, for your own peace of mind, it needs to be known that you are not okay with relaxing in his cave of plunders, when you dedicated so much of your life to helping the poor peacefully pass. His choices were antithetical to the practices you dedicated much of your life to. Desecrating resting places filled you with a deep, intrinsic discomfort - so you did not know what use he expected of you.

“My mother was a songstress for the inner temples of Waset, she told me all of the stories. All the places the King of Thieves and his army of shadowed men raided, all of the temples and tombs… She lived in fear of the day you’d come riding into her temple and leave the place in ruins,” you said softly, glancing away from him. Before an awkward silence could settle, you continue.

“You inspired fear and dread whenever word got to her of what you’d done. You didn’t get to her though, by the time you sacked more of Waset, she wasn’t a songstress anymore,” he takes note of your past-tense words, and mentally files it away. At the very least, there is no deeply personal grudge between you both, and for that the Thief King is thankful.

“But, I know who you are,” you finished, putting the now-empty bowl of broth down to look up at him. You still needed rest, and a wash, and an actually restful sleep. You set your hands down on your lap, both of you were sat on a hard rug, empty bowls of food being all that was between you both as you sat cross-legged from each other.

“You know of me, but you don’t know me. I can promise you I’m not half the bastard you think I am. I’ve kept you safe the past four days, you know. And this,” he gestured to the empty food bowls “-this can be permanent. You’ll want for nothing as long as you’re in my company.”

Is he seriously trying to buy you? It felt like he was and yet somehow that wasn’t in the most glaring thing you needed to pick apart. He seemed to be lacking in logical reasoning skills or maybe he really is just used to getting what he wants, but he needs to understand that taking somebody without their permission doesn’t immediately equate to getting want he thinks he deserves.

“I don’t believe I had a choice,” you’re swift to reply “-whether you tried to wake me up or not is irrelevant. I said I’d need four days and four nights to recuperate, you should have waited until I awoke if you were in need of my services. It should have been my decision whether to come with you,” you make a show of looking around at the piles of gold and ornate furnishings and shook your head with a confused and exhausted sigh.

“What could you possibly want from me, anyway? Unless you’re in the market for a virility spell,” you’re teetering on an insult there, and he narrows his eyes at you.

“Oh, spare me. I remember the ritual, and I could see what you were doing. You expect me to believe your abilities begin and end at medicine, burial and fertility?” he scoffed. “You called the ear of Gods, and they actually listened,” he bit out “-and both your Ka, and your Ba, possess great strength.”

Now this, this earned and expression of surprise. You dropped your expression of nonplussed irritation and confusion for just a moment. Exactly how proficient was the King of Thieves in matter of shadow magicks? The Lord Magister gave you an impression that his propensity for devastation and power was great, but there was no accounting for actual knowledge or proficiency. Did he have such a command over his Ka? Few people did, unless they were trained in the art, serving the Pharaoh, or were particularly gifted, and instructed in the way of the Shadow Game. You yourself had been a combination of gifted, and had varied tutelage from your mother in basic magical arts, and far beyond that from the Lord Magister.

“Yes,” Bakura smirked at your expression “-I may not be able to see them unsummoned, but I can certainly sense them. Power recognises power,” and that was as close to a compliment as you might get from him, if you keep up with the attitude.

“Then what do you want from me?” now more wary than ever - for what use does he want your power that his own tremendous ability doesn’t suffice? It’s at this point, he sheds his deep, red cloak, and shows off a dark, strange burn that appears to be going up the length of his arm. It doesn’t look like anything natural though, and has long, silvery spiderlike veins all across it that denoted its unnaturalness to you.

“Hazards of business really. Pharaoh’s curses,” he said simply “Complicated, annoying things I usually avoid, but they’re not painless,” he flexes though, muscles tensing as he does, and grimaces as though to prove the point that it did indeed cause him some discomfort to feel the cursed skin bending and moving.

“And you can’t see a physician or a magician in a temple because they’ll turn you in while you’re vulnerable or botch your medical treatment when they realise who you are?” you guessed, and he nods. That’s the start of what he wants, at any rate - a travelling magician and physician for all manner of curses he might end up accidentally triggering, though he doesn’t tend to trigger them often, he’s still a human that makes mistakes - evidenced by his arm. In truth, he wants the full breadth of your power, he wants you in those tombs w _ith him_ and detecting these things before they happen, if possible. But first, he needs to see the true range of your abilities and how practical they really are. Your abilities as a general physician would hence be tested first.

This was the best move he could have made for himself, in truth. You are a kind soul to an absolute fault and would be incredibly difficult to convince not to help somebody who truly needed it. Even if they brought it on themselves. You felt your body shake off some of its lethargy the moment the Thief King showed you the state of his arm, and looked up at him with more alertness than you had since you’d woken up.

“If that’s a Pharaoh’s Curse, I’ll need some rest for the sake of my Ba reserves. I can take a look at it, but I’ll need to know where you got it, and some supplies. You brought me here with the clothes on my back and not much else,” you knew the depths of the Pharaoh’s Curse, they ranged from petty hexes to vindictive, lifelong blood curses and had been a feature of burying the noble dead ever since you were a child. Sometimes, the Pharaoh’s Curses were referred to as the divine punishments of God, but, having grown up hearing about them, and the kind of magicians that would put them into place, you cannot help but think the kind of vindictiveness about them was very human, and far below the expectations of an angry God.

You knew exactly what an angry God felt like.

“I said you’d want for nothing, didn’t I?” the Thief King smirks, and rises up from his place, and walks to the bed you had been asleep on, and pulls out a pile of fabric from under the bed which he dumps ungracefully at your feet.

“Just tell me what you need, and you’ll have it,” he leans up against a wall, standing at full height and dwarfs you. He’s a lot more exposed without that cloak, and it’s now you can see the full state of his form. Between the thick, detailed crevices of muscle and power in his form are lines upon lines of old scars, healed bruises, and what you would suppose were “hazards of the business” - things he’d gained on his dread-inspiring fantastical assaults on tombs and temples.

Looking down at the pile, you picked through the clothes. There’s just two, but you have no doubt he has piles more somewhere from his time pillaging, and easily has enough wealth to commission more.

In one hand is a familiar fabric you recalled from your mother’s bedside, a beautifully soft white linen that was so sheer it was likely only worn for dances. It was something you always looked forward to wearing, and was one of the many luxuries you had to sell away when your family fell from grace.

To Bakura, you look entranced, and it’s the reaction he’s looking for. The way you reverently trace the material of the dress in complete silence, forgetting he’s there just for a moment, until he clears his throat to get your attention.

“There’s more where that came from,” he’s still smirking. You look at the other dress, and immediately recognise it as an ornate netted over-dress that’s worn over a plain white full body kalasiris, but it’s shape was utterly different to the sheer dress in your other hand. It wasn’t the correct over-netting.

It took a moment for it to click that the Thief King was aware of that - judging from the shit-eating grin on his face when you open your mouth to politely inform him of his mistake.

“You want me to wear this? Just this?” your tone a note higher. The arrogance, the nerve - it wasn’t prudishness so much as shock and mild outrage at his gall. He mimicked the stories of Kings because you’d heard of this, who hadn’t? Virile young Pharaohs of the older kingdom would call up noblewomen at their leisure and ask them to wear ornate netted over-dresses without their regular ones underneath to entertain them as they sailed down the Nile. The fact he was even implying you’d do the same was somewhat an affront. Did he not understand the context of ritualistic nudity as opposed to…this purely erotic display? Or did he know, and just not care? Did he truly think himself a King? The nerve, and the sheer arrogance was astounding.

“If you like,” he says, his tone utterly cocky. “-having seen you dance immorally to the darker Gods, I didn’t think you’d take such offence. It’s beautiful, you know. Queens have worn it,” for a moment, it’s hard to tell if he’s being serious, and you miss the undercurrent of teasing in his tone. You’re not familiar with him, so this just raises your hackles.

“Yes, with the right kalasiris underneath it! What the Gods require and what you require are not the same thing!” you said, vaguely scandalised and feeling your face heat up from forehead to neck. It’s only when he starts laughing, do you realise he had been teasing you from the start.

_Bastard._

“Oh, if only you’d seen your face,” he continued to snicker at your expense, it took him a few minutes to stop, even with you glaring at him. “You can expect plenty of finery while you’re with us, I just wanted to show you for yourself that your needs will be taken care of,”.

“My needs don’t need to be stolen, I just need to sleep, eat and wash, and then I’ll look at your arm,” you were going to prioritise it, but the bastard had just earned himself a demotion in priority “-if you haven’t dropped dead yet then you can stand to wait a little longer, how long have you had it?” you said with mild impatience.

“Hm, going on twelve moons, but it’s gotten larger since,” he answered seriously, finally wiping his smirk away.

“Then you’re not going to die just yet, fast acting curses would have taken you within the week,” and even though he’d played you for a fool with that little joke of his, you still felt the need to at least check.

There was plenty of magic steeped in the Lord Magister’s culture that he had imparted on you that was present long before he devoted himself to the Orichalcos, though it wasn’t quite so potent and powerful, at least you wouldn’t have to invoke anything.

You get up and walk over to him, pulling him from the wall with an abrupt tug of his infected arm.

“Isa sarāpa dē subhā'a dā patā lagā'ō,” you murmur, while your conversational skills were beyond rusty, the Lord Magister would be pleased to know your spellwork wasn’t, as you cast in the language of Altaern - the lost people of the oceans. You felt his arm tense as you put both hands on it boldly, one on his wrist and one on his bicep.

Bakura felt a strange, intrusive heat coursing up between your hands that waved over the spreading, blackened skin. It didn’t seem to react, though, nor did it shrink, or any of what he was perhaps expecting to happen. Oddly, he’s looking mostly at you while this was all happening, observing the tired sleepless shadows beneath your eyes in this closer proximity. It’s only now that he supposes you come across as fairly gaunt and unrested, and despite being knocked out for so very long, you weren’t exaggerating when you said you had no substantial rest.

“Oh yes, that’s a Pharaoh’s Curse, a petty vindictive hex at that, deadly if left for many years, uncomfortable up until that point, but you won’t keel over in the time it takes for me to have a rest,” you’re a bit curt in your tone after his little prank, but despite that, Bakura does feel a sense of relief wash over him.

He doesn’t thank you though, because he’s still blighted with the thing.

“I’ll let you rest and have someone draw some water up to you when you awaken,” he reverts back to being accommodating.

He had more questions. Naturally. All he’d had time to do beyond organise the next raid was think about the ritual he had witnessed and all it had entailed. You were tired, though, and demanded rest. That spell, like all magic, had exerted some of your Ba - your energy, which had only just replenished. It wasn’t really wise to be casting spells right away, even little ones, and you told him such.

He left you alone after that, and left with his men to go hunting.

* * *

It is apparent that your sleep would be quite restless, just as restless as your time in the Dark World, because naturally, all you could think about was the Dark World. When the Thief King returns, you’re finally asleep on the bed, and he sees the empty bowls from earlier being used. The largest one has some leftover water in it that you didn’t use for your bath. One of his men had come in with a small bag of herbs and spices at your request, proving that he had inspired the fear of the Gods into them - as they were at least respecting and listening to you a bit. He can smell lavender off of it, and realises when he sees a small wet poultice under the pillow that you’d made some sort of sleeping cure because you couldn’t sleep peacefully despite how tired you were.

As though sensing the inherent power and danger of his general presence, and not in an enforced magical comatose, you stirred on the bed. A latent sense of alarm did hit you now you had fully rested, much as you’d been able to keep your head talking to the King of Thieves, it was only just now setting in that you’d been taken to a mysterious place in the middle of the desert, where anything could happen - and the Lord Magister had given you a troubling prophecy, that meant you couldn’t just look for a means and leave, until you were certain this marriage between darkness and these ‘Shadow Items’ doesn’t come to pass. The Lord Magister has never, ever been wrong when it comes to predicting what would happen next, he knew what would happen to your parents, he used to give your younger self advice that hadn’t steered you wrong in the past, even if it feels like he’s…changing, now. There is little reason to doubt the validity of his words, other than yourself having a bad feeling about how much he’d given to the Orichalcos, and really, how much of that intuition could you trust?

“You’re awake,” Bakura said, looking around the room, and then taking in your appearance as you rubbed your eyes and sat upright. You’d donned the sheer kalasiris which was slightly less thin than you’d thought, but was so effortlessly light when you moved. It had a high collar around your neck and draping sash-sleeves down both shoulders from that same collar, exposing much of your lower back and upper arms. Around the waist is a dark brown sash that breaks up the long flowing white linens to give you a more womanly curvature, that the Thief King finds pleasing to the eye.

“Good,” he says, raking his eyes over you, which you brush off in favour of closing the distance between you, trying to give off some confidence, even if this entire situation had you on the back foot.

“I wondered when you’d be back,” you said, trying to appear bold.

He doesn’t move when you stride up to him, and just looks down at you curiously. It’s in these close moments that you’re so much shorter than him, your head reaching his chest in height. It almost makes you trying to square up to him confidently comical, in how much he dwarfs you.

You have done an admirable job holding your ground, considering how his reputation proceeded him. It could be considered either very brave or very stupid, depending on your outlook. The King of Thieves is of the opinion that you believe in your own power enough to the point that little scares you.

And it just makes him utterly tempted to see it fully unleashed again, however discomforting the fertility spell had been. He wants to see it, and he wants to see the slumbering force that makes Diabound bristle and stir deeply inside of him.

“Was I missed?” Bakura asks, with an air of sarcasm.

“Hardly, I just want some answers,” you said, now fully lucid and rested enough to be unsettled and alarmed by how quickly you’d been dragged from your comfortable humdrum to an underground lair filled with ill-gotten gains and deplorable men.

“For a start, where exactly are we? How far from home am I? How long do you intend to keep me from it?” these are reasonable questions, and had you been in a better mental state when you had first awoken, you would have levied them sooner.

“Far enough, a few days riding away - and you wouldn’t get there with ease without one of us directing you, running away would be pointless,” said the Thief King, as though stating a benign and bland fact. You scoff, and take a step back from him, arms still folded under your chest.

“Thief. I do not have to _run_ anywhere. It’s been a very long time since I’ve tucked tail and ran in fear of a man and I don’t intend to start now,” you bit out “-but for a lot of people in Waset I am the closest they will get to a physician, and at the very least, I expect to be brought back, at least momentarily,” you’re now inches away from jabbing your finger in his chest, and cannot resist, the tip of your finger pushing between his exposed pectoral muscles.

“You are a feisty one,” Bakura remarked, tossing his bag of spoils which was hocked over his left shoulder into a pile on the ground not too far from the bed. He doesn’t seem offended, however - rather more amused. “But apparently need to be told - I don’t _have_ to do anything for you, I am _choosing_ to be good to you. Believe me when I say that the agreement we have is not one I usually afford to the people beneath me,” there is the faint air of arrogance when he says that, but you do not rise to his baiting.

“So if I return to you to Waset, it’ll be when I see fit,” he said.

Now, the smart thing would be not to push his ‘goodness’ - as he put it, because as Fironet had said to her son, the King of Thieves has certainly killed for less. You had it good considering your position of semi-hostage, being that you were able to have him on the back foot, making him present himself as, in his own words, ‘less of a bastard’ - and pushing him away from that wasn’t smart.

However, you were not Fironet. You weren’t Hem-Bai or his son, or the Thief King’s men. You were not somebody who had to cow to this man, you held far more cards than he did. You had the knowledge and foresight of the Lord Magister - if you were to trust it, and your own power, of which he does not know the full extent yet. Yes, there is a healthy amount of fear for what the King of Thieves could become - but as he is right now, you are hard pressed to fear him, or his powerful Ka. Even when you had done a writ of sealing to keep its influence away from the fertility spell, you’d done it as though it were an inconvenience in your day, because, it was.

Whilst you are not confrontational in a physical sense, nor are you itching for a fight, because you truly believe the smartest road is a peaceful one, you are not a doormat and were keen to let the man know this.

Ultimately, you know far more than he does, right now. This puts you at an advantage, and perhaps, lulls you into a sense of security regarding your own power.

“Well, for your sake, I hope that’s within the week, because I fully expect to check on Fironet and the status of her health. I conducted very powerful magicks, it would be unwise to leave this unchecked. It would be equally unwise to anger your only source of medicinal care,” that was the only leverage you had, that the Thief King knew of, but it was good enough, and you jabbed the finger that was pressed against his heart to emphasise your point.

However, he doesn’t take kindly to threats, no matter how neatly they’re framed. He leans down, and grabs at your wrist, with such overwhelming strength that you are keenly aware he could just bend it backwards and snap it like the neck of a baby bird. This realisation makes you go very still, as though expecting a show of brute force. He surprises you when he does nothing but hold it, and just firmly squeezes it to assert his dominance, because he knows that he doesn’t need to do terribly much to show it, especially with your small body squaring up to his. It would be pathetic to show off his power, and his obvious ability to hurt you, and would be very, very counter productive.

He wants you to want to help him, so he has to put up with your attitude to some extent.

“I’m going to let that pass, because we are alone,” he said simply, before leaning down to drive his point. You can smell the last thing he ate and can feel the intensity of his burning stare, his four-stitched facial scare now very close to your face, it’s difficult not to rake along it like an arrow and settle on the intensity of his eyes when they are so very close. You resist the urge to pull your face away, and raise your chin up until you’re close enough to bump against him, clenching the fist of the captive hand. “But for your sake - ,” he turns your phrasing on you with a far more acidic tone.

“-I would advise not making the kinds of threats you cannot follow through on, because you’re surrounded by the kinds of people who would, and can smell the horse shit coming from your lips when you do,” he pulls at your wrist a little as though to remind you he still has it in his hand, and you’re still his captive audience.

“Earn your keep, and I will consider extending my good will, but don’t push it,” he lets your wrist go, and you pull it into your body defensively, rubbing it, though it isn’t hurt. You try to level a glare at him, but feel naked from how utterly he’d read your intentions.

You’re not the kind of person who curses somebody.

You wouldn’t hurt a fly if you could help it instead.

And whilst the Thief King doesn’t know much about you, he knows that much - from all that the Bai’s had said about you and some light recon in Waset.

He fully intends to exploit that kindness, but he needs you to want to help him, so now it’s up to him to diffuse the high tension and anger. He needs you not to be glaring at him that way.

“Ah yes, because stealing someone from their home is good will,” you mutter, firing his earlier sarcasm back at him.

“Well, I was about to take you out, actually,” he says, smirking when you give him a confused and slightly flabbergasted expression.

“I was going to show you where you are, I never intended to make it a mystery. If you’re finished being petulant, tighten your footwraps and come with me,” he instructed, before beckoning you with a finger tug which had your head spinning - his moodswings were going to give you whiplash before the day was done.

He leads you to his large, well-fed horse, ignoring the curious stares of his underlings as they followed your movements and raked their eyes along your kalasiris with curiosity and some degree lechery. The Thief King puts you on the horse, before mounting behind you and encasing you in the prison of his muscular arms as they tightened around the reigns, and the back of your head is forced into his semi-exposed chest.

Thirty minutes from the catacombs, he begins to ride you to a deserted village with purpose, and rides in purposefully suspenseful silence.

He has taken you to Kul Elna, the village of ghosts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .....{{ A/N: Uhhh I felt kind of iffy about the characterisation of Bakura in this chapter, not that it's wrong, but on my pacing, I just wanted to get this chapter out though, because I'm going quarantine crazy over here, and I just want to get back on track. So maybe he seems moodswingy? I want to say it's understandable though. For the first time, he has to consider someone else's feelings and what power they could possibly exert against him, he has to make someone like him, and now he has to come to terms with that. The next chapter will be more meaty in covering that, I hope.
> 
> I did have a few more fic-realisations though, I've abstained from mentioning the reader's Ka for a while, and right now there isn't a right "time" for it to reveal, but it's definitely something that belongs in the Dark World, along with the Exodia(s), Gods - both Wicked & not. I've done a bit of lore building around it, having taken from the YGO games rather than the TCG in that regard, so that'll be fun! Anyone else kind of want a shadow battle? I do. So does Bakura. He wants to see the Ka that's got his Diabound afluster. Methinks he wants to find a way to see it.
> 
> Did you enjoy the physical closeness between Bakura & Reader? It was brief. But I did. Can't wait to get to the b o o ty cl a p p ing but man, I guess it's a bit slowburn. Anyway, I'm going crazy from quarantine (I uploaded this on my birthday, I'm turning 24 in quarantine, how delightful), pls review, it will give me (1) serotonin. Next chapter will be better I promise. Stay safe my chums.....}}}}


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